The AntiGrinch
by freddikinsburkle
Summary: A Christmas with Fred and Wes
1. A Forbidden Treat

FRED

"**I'm dreaming of a White Christmas, just like the ones I used to know…"** Fred hummed along, her feet shuffling across the hallway in a jaunty and yet still somehow languid two-step in time to the sultry voice that carried through the apartment with ease. The song really wasn't applicable at all – in all her years growing up in Texas she might have seen one or two seasons that had a snowfall, and she couldn't recall a single one of them where the temperate climate had been at the proper humidity levels and temperatures to preserve the snowfall overnight, or even more than a few minutes at most… but she couldn't help but adore the song. There was so much about the holiday season that she enjoyed, Christmas had always been one of her favorite times of the year. The mood, of happiness and generosity that bubbled up out of people, the bright lights and glittering decorations, the smell of pine trees and marshmallows, hot chocolate, and of course, while she always stressed that the presents were the least important thing of the season, what girl didn't like presents? Little ones, big ones, a lot, or a few, homemade, store bought, it really didn't matter to her, it was the fact that someone cared enough to bother at all that made her warm and fuzzy, and she always loved watching people's faces light up as they tore at ribbons and bows and all the bright and fancy paper.

And that wasn't even counting the food. Days and days worth of food, and stuffing and turkey and Cornish hens and cornbread and biscuits and cranberry sauce and pickles and deviled eggs and … and that wasn't even counting the desserts. So many that she could've had one for every day of Christmas and then some. And the stockings and the candy and the making of the cookies and the notes left for Santa, even long after she had almost grown out of the belief that there really was a jolly fat red man who managed to squeeze himself into every chimney in the world – and even the houses without chimneys, somehow – all within the very same night…. **"May your days be merry and bright,"** the King intoned, as she drifted into the living room, drawing to a stop in the center of it and scrutinizing the room with a careful eye. The tree that was in the corner was a little sparse in its own right, it was not that far from the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, but she had insisted to Wesley that it was the one that she wanted from the lot. If they didn't love it, who would? She had argued, before he'd given her that half-sided little smile and agreed without any other argument. She was still fairly proud of how it looked, even with the slightly crooked trunk and the sort of wilting branches.

Strings of carefully strung popcorn, accented with the occasional cranberry, and for color and size contrast, a lightly glitter coated pine cone wrapped around the tree from top to bottom, where a tree skirt of festive green and red snowflakes adorned a white cloth, concealing the tree stand. She had avoided any lights on the tree itself out of practicality – as much as she might have loved the wilty tree, she could imagine it's faded green needles catching light all too quickly. A few simple wooden decorations, hand painted, that she'd found at a flea market one of the weekends that she and Wesley had gone searching for one enchanted artifact or another, adorned the branches, and atop the tree sat a simple bronze star, an inaccurate but still pretty representation of the north star. Branching out from the corner that the tree occupied, strings of connected snowmen held hands across the walls – the phenomenon of the never ending paper doll had fascinated her, and admittedly, she might have gotten a bit carried away, but Wesley hadn't seemed to mind.

Softly glittering three dimensional paper snowflakes, each of a different size and of course, no two the same shape, hung from the ceiling by thin, nearly invisible fishing line, creating an oversized illusion of the white Christmas that filled the air by music, and candles on the mantle between the assorted snow globes filled the air with a scent of cinnamon that mingled nicely in her opinion with the aroma of chocolate that filled the room, or at least in her immediate vicinity, given the steaming cup of hot chocolate and many, many marshmallows that she held in her hand. Her long fingers reached out, smoothing the pair of oversized knit stockings that hung from the mantle in anticipation of being filled overflowing later that night, before turning her attention towards the bookshelf that lined the wall where most people's living rooms might have held records, or an entertainment center. It only made sense to her that Wes' apartment would be overflowing with books, and texts, and scrolls, and parchments. There was a television, but it was small, and rarely used, mostly only turned on for the news, and the rare old movie fest. Rather, it was the books that took up the position of prominence, lining and stacked upon almost every available surface – especially when they were neck deep in a case.

There was one row of shelves, however, that had been cleared off last week, after she had begged Wesley to let her experiment with something. He had agreed, without even asking exactly what, and continued to assure her that she was free to do whatever she liked with the place, for the holiday or in general, but she still had trouble considering the apartment anything other than Wesley's apartment. True, she had been living there for almost … well, almost a year now, and sleeping in his bedroom as he refused to let her sleep on the couch even though she was the one that was invading – she had protested, declaring that she would have been just fine with the bathtub, or the closet even, but he had insisted. He had been so incredibly patient with her, these last months… year… as she worked, struggling to piece herself back together all over again. She just hoped that he could come to realize, now, that she was… well… maybe not… whole. Or, her. She would never be… the old Fred. If there was anything she had learned after her five year stint in the hell dimension, it was that one could never go back. They just had to find a way to go forward.

She was ready, she thought, to do that. Now, she just had to find a way to make him realize it. Her head tilted, her fingers plucking at the cotton padding that lined the bottom of the display that she'd created on the bookshelf that they had emptied off the week before, studying the village carefully. It had taken her several tries to get the recipe exact, to find the right consistency of the gingerbread that would hold up against the icing and the piping and the candy decorations, but once she'd had it right, she had fallen into a mildly fascinated routine for that next day or two. Shaping each piece, crafting the village in the image, architecturally speaking, of a Bulgarian lodge village in the 18th century after finding a picture in one of the spell books that had gotten under her skin, and she'd felt compelled to recreate in some form or another. When she'd first finished, with the kitchen covered in flour and piping and little candy wrappers strewn close to everywhere, there had been a complete village, with little windows, and street lamps, and little sleds and sort of blocky people, with fudge stepping stones and caramel coated stained glass windows on the buildings….

Over the course of the week, though, the inhabitants of the village had slowly begun to disappear, and a few of the smaller buildings, like one of the firewood sheds filled with licorice stick logs, and the coal shed filled with chocolate covered raisins, for example, had sort of… vanished. She had been slowly spreading out the display, guiltily hoping that Wes wouldn't notice, but she was fairly sure that it was only a matter of time. As if on cue, in fact, not two seconds after she'd surreptitiously plucked up one of the 'snow covered hay bales' that was actually a crisp treat coated in chocolate, and covered in powdered sugar and stuffed it into her cheek was the exact worst time for the sound of keys jangling in the door that heralded Wesley's return from the Hyperion. Eyes wide, with the look that she tried to project of innocence that really only made her look like the cat that ate the canary, especially with the dusting of powdered sugar on her fingertips and lips, she turned rapidly towards the door to greet Wesley with the quirky little half lopsided smile from behind her cup of hot chocolate that she hoped would help her conceal the rush of an attempt to chew and swallow the forbidden treat without choking on it.


	2. Caught in the Act

WESLEY

For the entire day, Wesley had stayed cooped up in his office at the Hyperion,

performing research for several client cases that were not all that urgent. Considering their lack of urgency and the fact that it was, after all, Christmas Eve, it could be argued that he should have set work aside and focused on something more light and casual but, truth was that... Well, he was not Ebenezer Scrooge, not by far, he just found it slightly more difficult than others to get into the festive spirit. It was half of the reason why he chose to interrupt his studying and leave the hotel when the preparations for the small party to take place in the evening had begun. The official reason was that he would carry on with the reading at home, so he wouldn't stand in the way of the girls that were busy placing even more decorations around the hotel. He was certain that Angel would help them in case they needed a man's hand. Wesley couldn't help but wonder how the ensouled vampire was taking the holiday spirit of the rather large group of girls that were currently staying at the hotel. He was going to keep it at an idly wondering level: after what had happened the previous year, there was little room for idle chatter between Wesley and Angel. The leader of Angel Investigations kept the interaction between the two of them to the level strictly required for business. He hadn't seen Angel as he headed out, to warn him that he was leaving and letting him all alone with his cheery guests.

With a heavy tome tucked under his arm – the book he had busied himself with earlier, Wesley made his way to the car and settled himself him to drive around town for some last hour Christmas grocery shopping and then home. Before starting to drive, he turned on the car radio but, after flipping through a couple of stations that all agreed to play Christmas music at the same time, Wesley decided to turn it off and have a quiet drive instead. There was a reason this reluctance of his to be surrounded by so many festive details – the same reason to which many of his imperfections boiled down: his childhood and his beloved father. Christmas was celebrated in the Wyndam-Pryce estate, yet is was nothing like what Fred described when she talked about the way it was celebrated in her family. The memory of Christmas, for Wesley, implied a house that carried some of the most expensive and fine decorations, along with a very formal dinner at which, more often than not, several Council members participated and talked about nothing other than business, ignoring the child that secretly wished that he were as lucky as the children whose fathers had normal jobs. He envied them for being allowed to believe that there was a Santa Claus and for getting presents that were giving from the heart, instead of books which served as a reminder that he was required to spend all the time he could becoming smarter than the other children his age.

As he grew up, Wesley never really celebrated the holiday on his own, although he did make an effort to attend and enjoy himself whenever he received an invitation to festivities organized by someone else. Unfortunately, the most recent Christmas held no good memories for Wesley either. Better said, it held mere faint memories of himself trying to stay alive on a hospital bed, fighting hard for his life because he knew how much another life depended on his. Wesley considered it a miracle that he managed to survive, just like he considered it a miracle that he managed to piece together the broken pieces of Fred's sanity and that the young woman who, one year earlier, refused to move from the corner of the room, had now turned his apartment into Christmas land nonetheless. In spite of his feelings towards the holiday and of the memories it brought, Wesley gave her free hand with his apartment because it was important to him that Christmas was perfect for her. Five years of her life had been spent in Pylea, where she had forgotten that this world was real and then another year was spent into the dark confines of her own mind – this was Fred's first Christmas in a very long time. Although, with each passing day, more and more decorations occupied his apartment, Wesley never protested and accepted each of her ideas with a warm smile on his lips. He found that her enthusiasm was endearing and adorable and, well... a little contagious. Wesley minded the Christmas songs on his car radio but he had gotten used to hearing them inside his house and he had even started finding them quite relaxing to have in the background when he was working. As for the ornaments, well... they made the apartment look more like a _home_. Perhaps, one day, the two of them would have a home in the true meaning of the word?

Ah, daydreams... After a couple of hours from leaving the hotel, Wesley's car was pulling over in front of the building he lived in. He picked up the bags of groceries under one arm, deciding to leave the book in the car for now, and then headed upstairs. As he unlocked the door and stepped inside the apartment, his eyes fell on Fred, that was there to greet him and he offered her a smile and a warm **"Hello"**. Pushing the door closed with his free hand, Wesley noted that something was a little... off about Fred. Arching a brow, he watched her carefully and noted the powdered sugar on her lips and how her cheeks were slightly puffier than usual, like those of a chipmunk. Chuckling softly, he leaned in and pressed a kiss to each of her cheeks. **"So what piece of architecture met its doom today?"** he teased. He had noticed that her little village had started disappearing but kept quiet about it because he found it adorable that she wouldn't be able to resist the temptation of all that gingerbread just laying there. **"If you want me to, I can go put these away in the kitchen, so you have time to chew. That way, when I return, we can pretend I didn't caught you in the act"**, he offered in a warm voice and displaying a charming smile.


	3. Any Elves?

FRED

It became immediately clear to Fred that Wesley was not in the least fooled by her pretense of innocence, not even for a moment, as his brow quirked up over the edge of his glasses and watched her through the rectangular lenses. She managed a guilty and simultaneously sheepish smile as he kissed her cheeks warmly, his amusement lighting his eyes in a way that made all of the effort of the village well worth it, all deliciousness aside. She felt a rush of warmth sweep through her, all too aware that it had nothing to do with the hot chocolate that she was nursing in an attempt to swallow the guilty pleasure of the haystack, and a slight flush of color threatened to creep over her cheeks. **"Haystack."** she managed to utter around the half a mouthful of the treat, a quick sip of her hot chocolate helping to let the rest of it find its way to the pit of doom known as the black hole that was her stomach. **"It was… crooked?"** Fred offered, with a hopeful expression, thinking that it seemed a plausible explanation to explain the necessity of devouring the treat. **"Ruined the whole landscape."** She added, nodding emphatically even as her fingertips rose to brush at the dusting of powdered sugar that had been caught on Wes' jaw from where he'd leaned in to kiss her in his formal, and yet informal greeting.

"**That's okay,"** She said, brushing aside his attempt at chivalry by offering her an escape route, or rather, by him pretending to look the other way while she finished destroying the evidence of her crime. **"I'll help."** Fred offered, securing the mug of hot chocolate in one hand, offering an arm out for one or two of the bags of food that he had carried up even as she let her gaze wander curiously over what contents she could see inside of them. **"How was business at the hotel today?"** She questioned, insisting on taking at least one of the bags before moving to follow Wesley towards the kitchen to begin the process of unloading the bags and putting away the food that he had picked up. He had his own system, of course – well, rather not, of course, she thought, seeing as most men as a general rule didn't believe in shopping in general, much less keeping a well stocked kitchen like Wesley did. She tried to recall, briefly, if she had ever seen what his idea of a kitchen and pantry had been before she'd taken over his residence and his home life, albeit unintentionally, but couldn't bring any clear memory to mind. This thought was followed by the next, logical one, being just how much it must actually cost him to keep her fed, bringing a guilty flush to her cheeks again, but she was quickly distracted again as she set the bag she had been carrying onto the kitchen counter, hurrying over to the stove as the teapot that she'd set on a little bit earlier began to chirp at her.

"**Any new cases? Any sightings of elves?"** She questioned, with a grin, as she glanced back towards him as she turned off the eye of the stove, setting about the ritual of gathering up the small tray used for Wes' tea. **"Or Grinches – we should be on the lookout, it is the night for them."** She warned, teasingly, though she did give him a chance to respond to her earlier question, then. She had not gotten a call from any of the other people at the hotel to tell her there had been trouble, and he wasn't showing any signs of wear and tear – and his clothing was rather gore and demon bit free, which implied that chances were it had been quiet, but she always liked to ask. She liked hearing about his day, and the things that he had studied, and the conversations that he had had, and the people that he had met. Truthfully, she just liked hearing him, but this was at least a very good excuse.


	4. What about Grinches?

WESSLEY

It was impossible for Wesley not to think that Fred was the most adorable woman he had ever seen in his entire life: chipmunk cheeks, powdered sugar on her lips... She looked akin to a child caught in the act of stealing from a batch of cookies that were supposed to be saved for a special occasion. With every cute detail Wesley discovered about Fred, he loved her even more and his life became just a little more harder. To love a woman with all of his heart and be unable to truly be with her because of words spoken by a vampire more than an year ago... Wesley tried to push his thoughts away from Angelus and the fact that the vampire's shadow still came between him and Fred. Fred's sheepish smile and the slight blush of her cheeks were met with an endearing smile of his own. As she managed to swallow the mouthful she had tried to hide and explained what it was and the reason why it became her victim, Wesley chuckled softly. **"Ah, well, if it ruined the landscape then I supposed it was only fair that you got it out of the way. I assume all of the other missing buildings and villagers had some sort of flaw that ruined the scene?"**, he teased her, revealing the fact that he had noted how the gingerbread scene became smaller by the day. When Fred brushed away the powdered sugar from his chin, for a brief moment, Wesley imagined how it would have been had she kissed the sugar away. Perhaps, one day, all of the walls between them would finally tumble down?

"_I'll help."_

Wesley was ready to protest at Fred's intention to take one of the shopping bags and carry it to the kitchen for him but, seeing that she already reached out for one, he handed her the smaller of the two. He really needed to get used to the idea that she was not a helpless young woman any more and that he needed to stop acting as if she were unable to take care of herself. For quite a part of the past year she had been the one taking care of him – that should have been more than enough proof of the fact that she was quite able to take care of herself and did not need him to act like a mother hen or like a ridiculously mannered British snob. **"Thank you"**, he replied and started leading the way towards the kitchen. **"It was a slow day"**, Wesley answered to her question. **"There wasn't much business, to be honest. All the agitation revolved around decorating for tonight."** He had been tempted to admit that this was the reason why he was home so early but he was aware that it was possible that such a comment could be taken wrong. There were times when Fred seemed very insecure about everything and the last thing Wesley wanted was to fuel that – more than he already did.

Arriving in the kitchen, he placed the bag on the counter and began unloading the items he had bought, both from the bag he had carried and from the one Fred had, since she moved her attention to the teapot. Wesley's lips curled into a smile. She was spoiling him, always waiting for him with a cup of his favorite tea when he returned home from a dull day at work – a routine he certainly loved, in spite of the fact that it was very stereotypically British. Once the items were all out of the bags, he started arranging them into the cupboards, respecting Fred's system of organizing things. His system before she moved in with him consisted in leaving things in what could be described as an organized chaos: he could find everything he needed but it was doubtful that anyone else could have found something without searching for some long minutes. Wesley imagined that it must have been hard for Fred during their first couple of days back in Los Angeles, all alone in a house she was unfamiliar with and him being sedated most of the time, unable to help her find her way. Things evolved in such a way that it was safe to say that Fred was more familiar now with the running of the household than he was. When she spoke to him, Wesley turned to watch her with a smile on his face. **"We almost had a case but after a brief investigation it turned out to be a sighting of an elf"**, he replied, keeping his answer in the festive spirit of the question. **"Grinches... Hmm, I do believe the last of them was swayed down the right path by a fearless demon hunter that likes to eat crooked haystacks."**


End file.
